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Where am I? NASA Spacelink Home The Library Instructional Materials NASA Educational Products Exploring the Moon Slide Set

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Slide 1 This picture of the Moon was taken with a telescope at LickObservatory, California. Before rockets streaked to the Moon, scientistsknew that the Moon had two major types of terrain. The lighter terrain,called the highlands, is more heavily cratered and older than the darker,smoother maria a latin word meaning "seas." Many of the mountains in thehighlands form large circles, called multi-ringed basins. The basins werethought by almost all scientists to have been made when large objectscrashed into the Moon. (Link Observatory Photo, Copyright UC Regents; used with permission.)


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This is a view seen by Apollo 17 astronauts as they orbited the Moon. Themaria are smoother, lower, and darker than the highlands. The crater inthe upper left is 20 kilometers across. (AS17-M- 1671)


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Our knowledge increased dramatically beginning in 1969 when people rodegreat rocket ships to the Moon. This shows the launch in 1972 of theApollo 16 mission to a landing site in the highlands of the Moon. In all,there were six Apollo landings on the Moon. In each case two astronautsdescended to the Moon's surface while a third remained in orbit around theMoon in the main spacecraft called the Command and Service Module. (S72-35347)


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John Young, Commander of the Apollo 16 mission saluting the flag. TheLunar Module is behind Young, with the Lunar Roving Vehicle parked next toit. This picture shows several interesting features about the Moon. First, Commander Young is wearing a space suit. There is no air on theMoon, so astronauts must bring their life support systems with them. Notice that he has jumped about a meter off the ground, in spite ofwearing the bulky space suit. In fact, Young and his extraterrestrialoutfit weighed 150 kilograms on Earth. If gravity was the same on theMoon, nobody could jump so far off the ground! Also notice that there areno trees or bushes in sight, and the astronauts did not set up camp nextto a babbling mountain stream. There is no life or flowing water on theMoon. (AS16-113-18339)


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Astronaut Harrison Schmitt driving the lunar dune buggy, officially calledthe Lunar Roving Vehicle, or LRV for short. The Rover greatly enhancedlunar exploration on the last three Apollo missions by allowing muchlonger traverses around the landing sites. (AS17-147-22527)


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One of the great advantages people have over robots is theirwonderful ability to solve problems. This slide shows how the Apollo 17astronauts repaired a broken fender on their Rover by using a map and ducttape. Without a fender, dust was being thrown both forwards andbackwards, interfering with driving. (AS17-137-20979)


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Many geophysical instruments were deployed on the Moon's surface. Each Apollo mission brought an array of scientific instruments with it. They measured the composition of the very tenuous atmosphere, the strengthof the magnetic field, and the nature of the interior. The large objectin the center of the slide is the central station, which sent data back toEarth. The smaller, dark object to the left of the central station is thepower supply needed to run the experiments (it used isotopes ofplutonium), and the shiny object in the foreground is a seismometer, whichdetected moonquakes. (AS16-113- 18347)


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Harrison Schmitt examines a boulder at the Apollo 17 landing site. Geology is more than picking up rocks or whacking them with a hammer. Geologists want to know how different rock types relate to each other. So, Schmitt and other astronauts examined large boulders carefully,sampling rocks from discernible layers. They also tried to see where theboulders came from; in this case, the large rock rolled down from the topof a nearby hill. (AS17-140-21497)


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This slide shows an astronaut collecting walnut-sized rocks with arake. The samples, aptly named "rake samples," proved to be extremelyvaluable because they provided a broad sampling of the rock types presentat a landing site. Some rock types were present only among rake samples. Also note the nature of the lunar surface. It is mostly powdery, withrocks distributed throughout it. (AS16-116-18690)


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NASA stores lunar samples in pristine condition in the LunarCuratorial Facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Thesamples remain in the glass and steel cabinets, bathed in an atmosphere ofpure nitrogen, which is relatively inert, so the samples do not alter byreaction with air. (S80-29345)


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The skilled technicians who curate the lunar samples wearlint-free suits for cleanliness, but actually never handle the samplesdirectly. Instead, they pick them up and chip samples off them by usingthe black rubber gloves that protrude from the cabinets. (S82-26777)


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This is a view of the farside of the Moon. The dark maria on theleft are barely visible from Earth. All the terrain to the right is onthe farside and was completely unexplored until the space age. Thehighlands are lighter in color than the maria, higher by a few kilometerson average, and intensely cratered. (AS16-M-3021)


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This is a sample of anorthosite returned by the Apollo 15mission. Anorthosites are composed almost entirely of one mineral,plagioclase feldspar. One way a single-mineral rock forms is byaccumulation by either floating or sinking in a magma. Becauseanorthosite seems to be an abundant and widespread rock type in the lunarhighlands, scientists believe that the Moon was surrounded completely by ahuge ocean of magma soon after it formed. (S71-42951)


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This diagram depicts the magma ocean concept. When the Moon formed it wasenveloped by a layer of molten rock (magma) hundreds of kilometers thick. As that magma crystallized, the minerals more dense than the magma sankwhile those less dense (such as feldspar) floated, forming the anorthositecrust. The dense minerals (olivine and pyroxene) later remelted toproduce the basalts that compose the maria. (Graphics by Brooks Bays,University of Hawaii.)


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After the first crust formed in the highlands, it was modified by theintrusion of other rock types. This one is called troctolite and iscomposed of olivine and plagioclase feldspar. A large variety of rocktypes formed during this period. (S73-19459)


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This is another photograph of the farside of the Moon. The darksplotch in the center is one of the rare maria on the farside. It sits ina large crater (180 kilometers across) called Tsiolkovsky. Every cratervisible in this photograph formed by the impact of objects into the Moon. The photograph was taken by one of the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft thatsurveyed the Moon in the mid-1960s. (Lunar Orbiter III-121-M)


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The Orientale Basin on the western limb of the Moon was formed bya large impact. About half of this eye-catching structure is visible fromthe Earth. Note the concentric rings; most scientists believe that thethird one is the actual crater rim. The diameter of the third ring is 930kilometers. There are about 40 such structures on the Moon (all largerthan 400 kilometers across), and they may all have formed in a relativelynarrow interval between 3.85 and 4.0 billion years ago. (Lunar OrbiterIV-187-M)


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With so many craters of all sizes in the lunar highlands, it isno wonder that the rocks have been modified by meteorite impact. Thissample was collected in the highlands by the Apollo 16 mission. It is acollection of rock and mineral fragments all mixed together. Geologistscall such rocks "breccias." Many of the rock fragments are themselvesbreccias; some, such as the dark fragments, were even melted by an impact. (S72- 37216)


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This picture taken during the Apollo 15 mission shows lava flowsin Mare Imbrium. The prominent lava flows that extend from lower left toupper right in this slide are among the youngest on the Moon, a mere 2.5billion years old! These flows are several hundred kilometers long. (AS15-M-1556)


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Although eruption of most mare basalts did not produce volcanicmountains, there are a small volcanic domes in a few places. This showsthe Marius Hills, a collection of relatively low domes. Rilles (sinuouslava channels) are also visible, one of which cuts across a mare ridge. (Lunar Orbiter V-214-M)


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This is a basalt sample returned by the Apollo 15 mission. Thebrownish color is caused mostly by the presence of the mineral pyroxene. The holes are frozen gas bubbles called "vesicles", a common feature ofterrestrial volcanic rocks. (S71-46632)


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The river-like feature in this photograph is called a "rille."Apollo 15 landed near the rim of this rille (called Hadley Rille) betweenthe two largest mountains. Hadley Rille is 1.5 kilometers wide and 300meters deep. Rilles are channels in which lava flowed during the eruptionof mare basalts. All samples collected from its rim are basalts, provingthat flowing water did not form these river-like features. (AS15-M-1135)


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Photograph at the Apollo 15 landing site, looking down into therille. The crew could have walked down into the rille and sampled rocksfrom its walls, but time and concern about their safety did not permit it. (AS15-85-11451)


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For comparison with Hadley Rille, we see here a lava channelabout 4 meters across on Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii, in 1986. When it wasactive, Hadley Rille probably resembled this channel, although it was muchlarger. The lava cools on top, forming a darker skin. Note the levees onthe sides, which help confine flow to the channel. The cone in thedistance is Pu'u O'o, the source of the lava. (Photograph courtesy ofScott Rowland, University of Hawaii.)


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Fire fountaining is another form of volcanic eruption. This onetook place in 1959 at Kilauea Volcano and sent lava up to 550 meters intothe air. Such eruptions, called "pyroclastic" eruptions, produce loosefragments of hardened lava rather than lava flows. Fire fountaining takesplace when the magma contains a high concentration of gases (usually watervapor and carbon dioxide on Earth). (Photograph courtesy of National ParkService.)


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Astronauts found a pyroclastic deposit on the Moon at the Apollo17 landing site. The orange soil is composed of numerous droplets oforange glass that formed by fire fountaining. (AS17-137-20990)


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Thin slice of some Apollo 17 orange soil. The view is 2.5millimeters across. The small drops of lava did not have time to formminerals in it before it cooled, so most of the droplets are composed ofglass. The darker ones did have time to crystallize partially, and formedthe mineral ilmenite, which is opaque, and so appears black in thisphotograph. (Photograph courtesy of Graham Ryder, Lunar and PlanetaryInstitute.)


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This is the crater Alphonsis on the Moon. This large impactcrater is 120 kilometers across. The dark circular features on the floorof Alphonsis are cinder cones produced by pyroclastic eruptions. They arelower (about 100 meters) and wider (10 to 20 kilometers) than cinder coneson Earth because the Moon's lower gravity and lack of air allow theparticles to travel further. (AS16-M-2468)


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This is a painting by artist and planetary scientist WilliamHartmann depicting the way most scientists believe the Moon formed. Because all the traditional ideas for lunar origin had fatal flaws,Hartmann and other scientists devised the idea that the Moon formed as aresult of the impact of a projectile the size of the planet Mars with thealmost completely constructed Earth. Both projectile and Earth alreadyhad formed cores and computer simulations of the giant impact indicatethat the core of the projectile gets added to Earth's iron core, thusaccounting for the fact that the Moon has a tiny iron core. Much of therocky mantles of the Earth and projectile melted or vaporized. Thematerial that ended up in orbit around the Earth then accreted to form theMoon. (Photograph courtesy of William K. Hartmann.)


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This is what Earthrise looked like from lunar orbit during theApollo 11 mission. One of the reasons for studying the Moon is tounderstand more about the origin and geologic history of the Earth. TheMoon provides information about how Earth formed, about its initial state,and about its bombardment history. This information has been erased fromEarth by billions of years of mountain building, plate motions, volcanism,weathering, and erosion. (AS11-44-6549)


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People with imaginations envision large bases on the Moon. Thispicture shows a complex installation with radio telescopes, launch site,mass driver (another type of launch facility), and a parent talking with achild, perhaps explaining where their ancestors came from. (NASA paintingby Pat Rawlings, Eagle Engineerng.)


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Although the Moon has no running water or air to breathe, itssoil contains enormous amounts of oxygen. This key element for lifesupport and rocket propellants can be extracted from the surface materialsby reaction with hydrogen (also present, though in small amounts). Itmight be exported for use in earth orbit or to fuel spacecraft on tips toMars and elsewhere in the Solar System. Many other materials could bemined on the Moon, such as iron, aluminum, and titanium for use asbuilding materials. (S83-28324)


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A lunar base could be built up gradually. This artist'sconception shows a habitat module being unloaded from an automatedspacecraft. The spherical objects are fuel tanks, which might use fuelproduced on the Moon. (S84- 43855)


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Professor Larry Haskin of Washington University in St. Louis haspointed out that besides the abundant oxygen present in every rock, theSun has implanted enough hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen into the lunarsoil to produce plenty of food. So, although the lunar surface is dry andlifeless, each cubic meter of moon dirt contains the ingredients to makelunch for two: two cheese sandwiches on (of course) whole grain bread, twoplums, and two 12-oz sodas. (Photograph courtesy of Twyla B. Thomas.)


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A key scientific task when people live and work at a lunar basewill be field geology. The real work of geology is done in the field,where geologists map rock distributions and observe both large- andsmall-scale features. In the scene depicted here, astronauts areexamining a lava tube, a common feature in basaltic lava flows on Earthand almost certainly present in flows on the Moon. (S88-33546)


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http://spacelink.nasa.gov/Instructional.Materials/NASA.Ed...Products/Exploring.the.Moon.Slide.Set/Slides/Slide.35.txt [7/22/2002 12:22:19 PM]

























Slides Slide 36 txt

Slide 36 txt

Slide 36

One problem with exploration of either the Moon or Mars is thatthere is no breathable atmosphere. Astronauts are also exposed todangerous radiation. To get around these risks, but still make use ofhuman intelligence, future space exploration will probably make use oftelerobotics. Such devices are a combination of autonomous robots andhuman operators, so a human brain can be present in the robot, even iflocated a thousand kilometers away. In this way, people will be able toexplore any region of the Moon without leaving the safety of their lunarbase. The robot's eyes are television cameras, so the remote operatorsees, in stereo, what the robot sees. When the operator turns his or herhead, the robot turns its head, giving the operator the sense of being inthe robot, a phenomenon called "telepresence." Similarly, the operator canuse the hammer to chip off rock samples, pick them up, examine them, andstow selected ones for return to a lunar base. (NASA painting by PatRawlings, Eagle Engineering, based on a concept developed by Paul D. Spudis and G. Jeffrey Taylor.)


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